The RTX 4090 is one of the best cards on the market, and if you’re considering buying one, be sure to check our favorite picks.
While the RTX 4090 is easily one of the most powerful cards on the market, it’s important to note that GPU makers are a little bit ‘sneaky’ when it comes to naming GPUs. You see when any brand uses a mobile Nvidia GPU, that is, a smaller form-factor version, it is usually appended by the letter M. So if you’re buying an RTX 4090 on a laptop, it’s actually an RTX 4090M, and that means it’s actually not an RTX 4090, but an RTX 4080 instead. In that way, all laptop GPUs are one step down, so an RTX 4080M on a laptop would be an RTX 4070, an RTX 4070M on a laptop would be an RTX 4060, and so on.
And that may seem a bit . . . peculiar, but AMD does a similar thing too. That’s mostly because it’s easier for a company like Nvidia to say, “the RTX 4090 is the best GPU you can buy on any device” instead of going into detail by saying, “The RTX 4090 is the best we can do on desktop, while the RTX 4080 is the best we can do on a laptop”. And the fact that you’re not getting an RTX 4090 on a laptop isn’t a bad thing because even the RTX 4090M (AKA, the RTX 4080) already has to be throttled sometimes due to heat. So, if you got an actual RTX 4090 in your laptop, you’d basically never get to use it to its full potential.
So, with that little bit about GPUs in laptops over, let’s jump straight into our favorite picks in various categories. All of these have the RTX 4090M and also generally have similar specs and prices, with the main difference being screen size and thickness, something we go into a bit more at the bottom. To that end, be sure to think about what you want the laptop for besides just gaming as you look through our list below.The Best RTX 4090 Laptops in 2024
Buy the if you want the best overall RTX 4090 laptop
Buy the if you want the best thin and light RTX 4090 laptop
Buy the if you want the best 18-inch RTX 4090 laptop
Buy the if you want the best 17-inch RTX 4090 laptop
Buy the if you want the best 14-inch RTX 4090 laptop Alienware m16Best overall RTX 4090 laptop
Alienware is one of the most well-known names in the gaming laptop space, so it’s probably no surprise to see them at the top of this list with this Alienware m16, which is an excellent choice if you want something that balances specs vs. price. Along with the RTX 4090, this configuration comes with the Intel Core i9-13900HX, one of the best CPUs on the market that won’t cause any sort of bottlenecks with the RTX 4090. Not only that, but it’s a good option if you want to stream to YouTube or Twitch since it will be able to handle both the game and the transcoding.
In terms of screens, you have a couple of different options, but we opted for the best of the best since the RTX 4090 can handle it pretty well. You get a 16-inch screen with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, so just a bit better than you’re typical 1440p, and it means you get the superior 16:10 aspect ratio, at least for gaming. It can also hit a very impressive 240Hz refresh rate, and while you’ll likely get relatively close, you might have to compromise on some graphical settings if you want to hit that sort of refresh rate.
As for other specs, you get 32GB of DDR5 RAM, so you’ll have an overall smooth experience, and it will also help a bit with streaming. Storage is also pretty excellent at 2TB, although with how big games have gotten, you might fill that up in the long run. Of course, battery life isn’t great, which is to be expected given that you have such powerful specs running under the hood, although the overall build is great, so we can’t complain on that front.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16Best thin and light RTX 4090 laptop
Finding a gaming laptop that has one of the best GPUs in the market while also being thin and light is very difficult, and yet, the Zephyrus M16 manages to hit both the GPU and the small size and form.
